U.S. Newswire : Releases : "Focus Pleased by Retraction of False Statements by Evolution Advocate..."

Ah yes...my beloved fundie group 'strikes' again. So they consider modern evolution "an intellectually bankrupt education policy". I'm going to be kind here and draw some links for them and try not to ascribe too many things to their organisation.

1. I'm going to presume that their idea of evolution is narrowly restricted to biological evolution (as opposed to say cosmological evolution). The reason being is that thus far I've only seen them attack biological evolution and not any others. Although if they believe in a LITERAL Genesis story then I'll add cosmology to their list as well.

2. I'm not going to naively (yeah right) presume that their attack is on evolution per se but the policy that teaches only evolution and not 'teaching the controvesy' i.e. teach Intelligent Design alongside Evolution.

Nevertheless ID is simply bad science because they have not given anything unfalsifiable i.e. since it cannot be disproven, it cannot in the scientific sense of the word be proven. Sort of like a theory that a pink invisible hamster created the world and that it's omniscience and cannot be directly tested by naturalist means.

Given that that is the case, the idea that teaching this alongside real science and a theory that has been and is tested EVERY SINGLE TIME someone does a research paper on biology is disturbing. After all why not teach the Demon Theory of Illness. There are groups who believe that diseases cause germs (not the other way round).

More to the point on ID itself, the stuff held up as being Irreducibly Complex (taking one part away destroys its function e.g. mousetrap) has been shown to be anything but so. 20 proteins needed for blood-clotting? What about 16 (oops so 20 is no longer the magic number)? Even if 16 is the new magic number, how about recent research suggesting how this could be achieved? But before we even get there, how do we identify what is considered Irreducibly Complex. And should the proponents tell us the mechanism by which such things are created? Poof! The Intelligent Designer did it is hardly good science, it doesn't spur any new discoveries or reserach.

Just because something looks complex doesn't mean it cannot be achieved by a small gradual changes over a long period of time.

But I wonder what the local chapter of Focus on the Family thinks about Evolution...

Addendum: I sent off an email to the local chapter(?) of Focus on the Family at family@focus.org.sg, taken off their main website and it bounced. Anyone with their working email address?